Sunny Seagulls at Jones Beach

[nickphoto123]

Hello All,

Visited the beach today, a clear cool breezy day.

The gulls were not as agressive as they were in mid-winter.

But they did come and eat they did:

http://nickphoto123.smugmug.com/gallery/474924

Regards, Nicholas

[Geoff Chandler]

Nicholas,
These are very good and I am amazed at such good shots into the sun like that. Well done. Did you do any post processing??
Geoff

[gary_hendricks]

These are awesome, my favorite was 19292259, the one with the sun behind the bird giving it a glowing effect, good job. :)

[EAP]

Spectacular! Made me think immediately of Jonathan Livingston Seagull... :p

[nickphoto123]

Hello All,

Glad you liked my seagulls.

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PLEASE NOTE: A WORD OF CAUTION:

Do not attempt to shoot into the sun with an Optical Viewfinder.

My F-828's EVF (Electronic Viewfinder) enabled me to frame these shots with the sun in the frame.

There is no direct sunlight into my eye.

I also limit the time I actually have the camera pointed to the sun to protect the sensor.

_____________________________

Yes, I post processed the images.

Under these conditions I like to underexpose to protect the highlights.
I left the exposure compensation at zero due to the nature of the subject:

A seagull with alot of bright sky. I used center-weighted metering knowing the gull would be a bit underexposed.

A levels adjustment and a Shadow/Highlight tweak in Photoshop CS
revealed the gulls as you see them, except for the associated noise in an underexposed image, so I ran them through Noise Ninja using F-828 ISO 64 (as shot) and then resized them as JPEG's for posting to SmugMug.

It is alot of fun.

Regards, Nicholas